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TUFFY: You could build a camp on top of the excavator.
[laughter]
PAULIE: I've never built a cabin on top of an excavator before.
MARK: You've got to simulate 10 fat Italians.
JOHN: We've got a few heavyweights in there
leaning to one side,
I think this thing's gonna just tip over.
Can we test this before we put the cabin on here?
MAN: No fear.
JOHN: Ohh!
MARK: Whoa, whoa!
PAULIE: We're gonna lose all our tents.
They're not made for 50-mile-an-hour winds.
JOHN: I can't hear you.
Ohh!
PAULIE: The big question here is will it spin?
JOHN: Wow!
Oh, my God, look at this!
PAULIE: We are the Cabin Kings.
I'm Paulie, design and detail guy.
Doors are looking good.
That's Tuffy, backwoods inventor.
And when it comes to heavy machinery, he's the man.
TUFFY: You need to get out of there.
PAULIE: Our business, Building Wild.
If you want a custom cabin
we can build it fast for a great price.
To keep costs low, you help supply materials,
manpower, and a lot of hard work.
Together we'll build the cabin of your dreams.
Yo.
TUFFY: It's a miracle I found you.
PAULIE: Yeah.
TUFFY: I've been wandering all over the place.
PAULIE: I got to go over to cargo pickup.
Careful with that. That's pasta fazool.
Hi, my mom shipped a Southwest cargo,
a package for me from Philadelphia.
TUFFY: I'm kind of in a hurry. PAULIE: What?
TUFFY: We got to get going. PAULIE: Yeah, we'll get going.
PAULIE: So this week we're building
for a couple Italian guys in Vermont,
so I thought it'd be cool to bring in some Italian food
that I brought back from Philly.
Thank you.
TUFFY: You got tools, right? Tools for the job.
PAULIE: No tools, no tools.
How long is it there?
TUFFY: Three hours.
PAULIE: Is it really?
TUFFY: It's a long ways from here.
I love these doors.
Can we do this?
PAULIE: No.
TUFFY: Why are you bringing these people food anyway?
What are you trying to do here?
PAULIE: It's nice.
It's always good to bring something,
you know, whenever you're going to somebody's house,
it's always nice...
TUFFY: Well, Paul, this is like the first time we've done this.
PAULIE: How many jobs have we done for Italians? Zero.
TUFFY: I didn't realize this was different.
PAULIE: It is. How is it?
TUFFY: There's leaves in here.
PAULIE: It's called broccoli rabe.
TUFFY: I don't recognize half of what I'm eating here.
They might be insulted by this.
PAULIE: Trust me, they're not gonna be insulted.
They're gonna appreciate that.
Do you like it?
TUFFY: It's alright.
PAULIE: Jeez, you just don't know what's good, man.
TUFFY: I wouldn't bring it to deer camp.
PAULIE: Oh, oh!
Hi, John.
JOHN: I'm John. How are you? PAULIE: I'm Paulie.
JOHN: My name is John. I'm from New Haven, Connecticut.
Mark is my cousin, but he's also my best friend.
We've grown up together over the years,
but now we're kind of separated.
Having a cabin in the woods is a dream for me
because we're gonna be able to get the family together now,
light the bonfires and just hang out and eat and be together.
TUFFY: Paulie says because you guys are Italians,
we got to present you with food.
I never heard such a thing.
PAULIE: The problem is,
is my partner ate most of the baked ziti on the way in.
[laughter]
TUFFY: This is really a tradition
with you Italian people?
MARK: Well, usually traditionally
they leave some of it, you know.
I'm Mark.
One of the things you can do here
is you can do whatever you want, no questions asked.
We can have bonfires, we can make tree houses,
we can just have adventures like little kids.
JOHN: Since I was a little boy
I always wanted to live out in the middle of the woods.
We've had the property 10 years now.
PAULIE: And you're still not here yet.
JOHN: Every time I try to do it,
something comes up and I just can't make it happen.
PAULIE: We know how to build very quickly.
And we have a small crew that we come with,
but the more we get from you, the more we can do.
JOHN: Well, I have a log home kit,
but I have no idea how to put it together.
I waited so many years for this,
and I just didn't want a, you know, a run of the mill cabin.
I wanted something a little bit special.
I heard those guys are very good,
and I don't have a clue when it comes to carpentry.
PAULIE: So what do you say we go look at these places,
see what you got? Alright?
JOHN: Okay. Yeah.
MARK: I got one more spot here, hang on.
PAULIE: We started going around on ATVs
looking at different parts of the property
that we felt might be a good place to build.
JOHN: This is one of the spots that we were looking at here.
What do you think about it?
PAULIE: It's pretty.
TUFFY: There's swamp grass growing in here,
this is a wet area.
PAULIE: Okay, horrible spot, next spot, let's go.
TUFFY: Can you find something a little bit higher?
It's clearly evident that this is wet land.
Why would you want to build in a place like this?
There's got to be a better spot around here someplace.
PAULIE: Yo! This is the spot.
MARK: This is the spot?
PAULIE: This is the spot right here.
TUFFY: I can't believe we didn't come here first.
Look at this view.
PAULIE: Yeah, this is beautiful.
TUFFY: It's like hands down, it's no contest,
I mean, this is the site.
PAULIE: What's up with the excavator?
JOHN: Well, that's an excavator that I purchased,
and it's a little old, but it works.
So what do you think?
PAULIE: I think this is the spot.
MARK: He's gonna have to convince Anna.
PAULIE: What's the problem with Anna?
JOHN: Anna wanted a sunrise, and I wanted the sunset.
So I think if we could situate the cabin
so she could see the sunrise...
PAULIE: You're willing to give that...
JOHN: I'm willing to give that up to have this spot.
My wife, she wants the sunrise, I want the sunset.
Love her dearly, but when it comes to this,
I just can't agree on anything.
TUFFY: You can't just put a porch on each end
so you could sit and see the sunset and the sunrise?
Two porches.
JOHN: Well...
TUFFY: You want it shining through the windows?
JOHN: It would be nice, but we'll see what we can do.
TUFFY: I got a little idea.
I've been kicking around an idea for a long time, 20, 30 years.
I think it's gonna be perfect for what these guys want.
That excavator, the top half of that excavator
is ideal for what we need.
I got an idea that we can make the whole house rotate.
[laughter]
It's not really that crazy of an idea.
Instead of us spending a couple thousand dollars
in a foundation, we've already got it,
we just need to drag this thing up,
get it nice and level and start building.
No concrete, no pier pad, no nothing.
This is a huge step. It's a huge step.
Have you ever seen anything like that?
JOHN: Never heard of anything like that.
PAULIE: There's a reason.
There's a reason no one's have heard anything like that.
TUFFY: This could be good for our business.
PAULIE: Yeah, I've got some magic beans, too,
and if you plant 'em,
they grow up and there's a goose laying golden...
TUFFY: This could be good for our business.
PAULIE: I mean, I've heard a lot of crazy stuff
come out of Tuffy's mouth,
but building a cabin on an excavator?
No, man, you build cabins on foundations.
TUFFY: Come on over here, guys,
I can show you how this is gonna work.
This is your kitchen window.
You watch the sun come up, and then the whole cabin turns.
You watch the sun go down.
Same kitchen window, same kitchen window.
Wife's happy, old man's happy.
MARK: Things will be flying off through the windows, you know.
I'll just see his face stuck to the window like, agh.
TUFFY: There are ball bearings about this big around
and they're huge.
If you raise that boom up and pull that hydraulic motor,
you could take but one hand
and rotate this whole machine with one hand.
And to put a little dinky log cabin on here,
that's nothing compared to this boom.
PAULIE: And we're sure this is gonna work?
TUFFY: It can be done.
Look at the size of this thing.
How big of a house you think you're gonna build?
PAULIE: Alright, alright.
We believe that it can be done.
He says it with such commitment that it makes me believe.
It's like okay.
Nobody knows excavators more than Tuffy,
and if he believes we can build a cabin on top of an excavator,
let's give it a try.
JOHN: I like the idea we can spin it.
I want to do it.
I've never seen it done before
and I'm wondering if it's gonna work.
I mean, they said they can build a house on top of an excavator.
I've never even heard of such a crazy thing in my entire life,
but they said they can do it, so I'm willing to try it.
TUFFY: The problem is we need that machine.
We need half of that machine.
JOHN: Yeah, that machine I'm not willing to give that up.
I mean, I have too much money into that,
it wouldn't make sense.
PAULIE: How much do you have into this?
JOHN: $21,000.
TUFFY: He's got an old relic of an excavator here.
They think the thing is wonderful.
I mean, it's boneyard material, you know.
I could certainly put it to better use
and turn it into something good.
We have to satisfy the man with sunup, sundown.
How are we gonna do that?
We want it beaming through the kitchen windows.
JOHN: You know, I have a machine down the back here for parts,
maybe you can look at that.
TUFFY: You've got a parts machine?
JOHN: Yes, I do.
You could have that one.
TUFFY: We can have that one?
PAULIE: That all of a sudden
becomes a little bit of a sweeter deal.
TUFFY: The kit cabin is an excellent idea for this location
and for these guys.
First we got to drag the old excavator out of the bushes.
This whole thing is gonna be stripped.
And then we're gonna put two main beams on it
and we'll take another series of beams
and build what I call purling,
and then the floor joists will go
the opposite way of the purling,
and then we're back in Paulie's world.
We're back wood to wood.
We could have the other machine, correct?
PAULIE: And we're gonna do this for that number
that we were talking about.
TUFFY: Same number, Paulie.
They're supplying, look how much they're supplying here.
PAULIE: Okay, okay.
So we've agreed on a cost here.
They're gonna give us their old excavator to use.
They're gonna throw in some labor.
At the end of the week
we're gonna have a dream cabin that spins.
JOHN: That sounds like a deal.
TUFFY: That's a deal.
You're making a dream come true for me, too.
I've always wanted to do this.
I don't have a parts excavator
that I've been willing to cut up.
We're fulfilling two dreams here.
I'm gonna make a dream come true for him,
keep him and his wife happy,
and hey, you know, let's not kid ourselves,
I'm gonna get paid to build something
I've always wanted to build.
JOHN: Salud.
TUFFY: Is there gonna be a lot of this going on?
PAULIE: I think so.
TUFFY: Bread and wine... PAULIE: Let's hope so.
TUFFY: ...with your newfound brothers.
PAULIE: Are you tired of it yet?
TUFFY: You just don't get nothing done like this.
It's not bad.
PAULIE: Did you just dip your bread?
TUFFY: Aren't you supposed to do that?
PAULIE: No.
TUFFY: It's not bad.
This has been a whole new learning experience for me.
I'm just a brown bagger.
PBJ, hero sandwich and keep on going.
PAULIE: Hey, good morning, everyone.
Welcome to Dover, Vermont.
We can't ask for a more beautiful day.
Our goals for today are to get this site cleared and leveled.
We also have to strip down the excavator,
and hopefully by the end of the week we have a spinning cabin.
MARK: I see problems.
JOHN: Paulie, is this gonna work?
PAULIE: Tuffy, is this gonna work?
TUFFY: It's gonna work just fine.
PAULIE: Okay, so let's get at it.
Thanks, everyone.
While the crew's leveling the site
and we're getting our materials in place.
Tuffy and I are gonna head down the hill,
get to that old excavator and start ripping that thing apart.
Where do we start?
TUFFY: Well, we've got to get the track motors off of it,
'cause we can't tow it, you cannot turn those tracks.
PAULIE: Okay.
TUFFY: We don't need any of this boom.
There's no sense in trucking all this stuff home.
So we'll drop this cylinder,
we'll pull the main pin over here,
and we'll get a backhoe in here, and we'll pull this boom off.
PAULIE: I'll pull the truck up.
TUFFY: We're gonna take the boom off, the engine, the fuel tank,
the hydraulic system, the swing motor.
The only thing left is gonna be just the tracks
and the turntable on top.
Everything from there up has got to go.
PAULIE: Tuffy apparently has been thinking about this
since he's been a little kid, building on top of an excavator.
When we got to the Cangiano property,
there was this excavator sitting there.
So I think what went through his mind was,
here's my chance to take that parts excavator,
build a cabin on top of it just like I've always wanted to do,
and have it be able to enjoy both sunrise and sunset.
MAN: Got it.
PAULIE: He's got my full support on this project as of right now.
If things start to go horribly wrong,
we're gonna have to make some game time decisions here.
Nice work.
JOHN: Tuffy wanted me to operate this machine.
There's a lot of different motions and angles
as you're lifting the load up.
I'm a little concerned about how this is gonna go with me
for the first time driving this.
It's fairly easy, but not as easy as it looks.
I'm coming down, the logs are very long,
and there's trees on either side,
so I wanted to get a better visibility.
I lifted it up very high
so I could see the trees on either side.
JOHN: I can't hear you!
Ooh! [bleep]
MARK: John decided that for better visibility,
he put the pile high above his head
just like Paulie said not to, and when he hit a bump,
all of a sudden the whole machine just went right over,
and of course now we got a situation on our hands.
Remember you said this morning
it takes a lot to get Tuffy to blow a gasket?
I think you just reached that point,
and we're gonna have to get him over here to do this,
'cause I think we're gonna get killed
trying to do this ourselves.
JOHN: Maybe you're right.
I was hoping that we could just do it ourself,
but Mark is probably right.
I don't know what else to do.
Better off we get them and help us
because we could maybe get hurt.
TUFFY: Give 'em a simple [bleep] job to do.
PAULIE: Tuffy and I can't believe our eyes.
We go out there and the skid steer is up on two wheels.
Whether or not Tuffy should have had John driving this,
I don't know.
Right now it doesn't look like it.
You're okay, right?
JOHN: Oh, yeah.
Do you think we damaged the logs?
TUFFY: You didn't help 'em. Don't walk on 'em.
We don't want your footprints all over 'em.
You guys don't get it.
Yeah, I'm pissed off.
We're here to build a nice log cabin,
and now they dropped them in the gravel road.
I guarantee you, 10 or 20 of those logs are damaged
and full of stones.
You got to carry your load down to the ground.
You lucky you didn't get propelled right out through.
PAULIE: Now he tells you.
TUFFY: Thankfully he was smart enough to stop while he's ahead.
Flipping it over like this did not hurt it,
but now it depends on how you set it down.
JOHN: Start it.
MARK: Look at this [bleep].
[bleep]
TUFFY: The next step could be damaging to the machine.
If you slam the machine down some six feet,
you could crack an axle, you could break the bell housing.
People get killed pulling stunts like this.
How come it don't want to go?
[bleep]
That's what I didn't want to have happen.
PAULIE: You're okay, right?
TUFFY: Yep.
You know how you got to push the button to make it go?
The minute I hit that freakin' button, it took off.
PAULIE: As soon as he engaged the forks, the logs took off
and he boom, boom, boom, boom, I mean bounced.
It shook his fillings.
It also made me laugh, which I probably shouldn't have,
but I knew he wasn't hurt, and listen, Tuffy bounces.
Oh, man, did that--
that was a shake, rattle, and roll right there.
TUFFY: That's what I didn't want to have happen.
PAULIE: Oh, I know, I know.
Okay, can we grab what we can grab here?
TUFFY: No, we're gonna go back to work.
PAULIE: Okay.
How's it going?
TUFFY: The first thing we have to do
is put two main beams on top of the excavator.
At 90 degrees to that we put the purlings on.
And then the floor joists go 90 degrees to that.
And then you put your subflooring on,
and then your walls.
All the time you're going up and up and up.
PAULIE: Alright, so I'm gonna need a wrench.
I'll start on these nuts in here at the turntable.
TUFFY: Yeah, we got to leave the turntable on there.
PAULIE: The turntable will stay on,
but this has all got to come off up here.
And it's all nut and bolted.
TUFFY: No, no, we need all this. We need all this for support.
PAULIE: You don't want to put more beams on.
We want to find a place for the 2-by-12s to sit.
TUFFY: No.
We've actually got two more rows of beams going on here, Paul.
PAULIE: Tuffy, we can't get two more rows of beams
going on here.
All of a sudden you're adding more weight to this thing.
We're taking stuff off it, aren't we?
I'm looking at the engineering of this thing.
What I'm realizing with the excavator and the steel on top,
the floor on top of that.
By the time this thing is done
we're gonna be about 10 feet off the ground.
TUFFY: I don't think you understand
what we're doing here.
We're gonna put a beam down here,
and then you got to put purling across the top of it.
That's two feet higher than this right here.
PAULIE: Where are my 2-by-12s going?
TUFFY: On top of the purling.
You're gonna be up here. You're gonna be up this high.
PAULIE: What are you talking about, all the way up there?
What are you gonna do,
step out to look at the west and drop down 6 feet?
MARK: I'm getting that warm, fuzzy feeling.
[laughs]
JOHN: Tuffy seemed really positive, but now I don't know.
I'm getting my doubts now.
I'm not convinced just yet.
PAULIE: Confidence is at about 33% right now.
Since we got this thing apart, we took off motors,
we took off hydraulics.
This thing does turn and it turns pretty easily.
Now whether or not it's gonna turn
with 7 tons of a log cabin on top,
the jury's still out on that one.
Take a look at this.
Now listen, it's not your steelwork that's shaking here,
but it's the excavator in here...
TUFFY: Yeah, it's a little bit in the bearing.
MARK: Well, you got to simulate 10 fat Italians.
[humming Italian song]
If you're trying to eat the spaghetti
and the house is doing [makes noise],
you're gonna get it all over yourself.
PAULIE: This is what I think we need to do--
we need to bolt our cabin to our steel.
TUFFY: Well, what's the question?
I thought we were bolting it down right from the start.
What's the question?
PAULIE: The question is the shaking.
TUFFY: I think once you start getting some tonnage on here,
like this corner is going down 'cause that corner's going up.
JOHN: I'm 200 pounds, and I'm small compared to my family.
And so we got a few heavyweights in there leaning to one side,
I think this thing's gonna just tip over.
Can we test this before we put the cabin on here?
PAULIE: Oh, we are testing it. We are, we are.
TUFFY: We'll get everybody here on the crew
and we'll stand on it.
PAULIE: Yeah. Would it make you feel better?
JOHN: It would make me feel better
because I'd hate to put the cabin on here
and then we're gonna have a problem.
Then we have to take the cabin all apart
and have to do the job twice.
MARK: Tuffy, I don't think he wants to accept that
there's problems with the structure.
'Cause that whole platform is doing this,
and that's without the house on it.
Once you add all that extra weight, it's gonna get like,
you know, oh, my God, what's gonna happen?
Is it gonna tilt?
TUFFY: You got 30 guys here at 200 pounds apiece, what's that?
PAULIE: 6,000 pounds.
JOHN: 6,000, but the cabin's like...
PAULIE: The cabin's 14,000. 14,000 to 16,000.
TUFFY: We need something heavier.
PAULIE: I got it.
TUFFY: What do you want to do?
PAULIE: I want to put my truck up here.
TUFFY: You're gonna put your truck up here now?
PAULIE: With the 30 guys.
TUFFY: It's a waste of time,
if you guys want to play games for 3 or 4 hours
and take away from build time,
then we'll put a truck up here on the deck.
PAULIE: John's worried that as soon as we get some weight on it
that it can flip to one side.
I've never built a cabin on top of an excavator before,
so I'd like to go ahead and test it out.
TUFFY: I don't want this holding up the build at all.
PAULIE: Alright.
We're testing our weight, right?
We're gonna test our weight, see if this thing spins.
JOHN: Is this gonna answer my question
about this thing tipping with the excavator?
PAULIE: This is gonna really see where we're at.
I mean, we have 3 tons coming onto this point here.
TUFFY: Let's just get it on there!
PAULIE: Alright.
TUFFY: We've stopped work, we got to pick up tools,
move lead cords, break stuff down,
just so we can put the damn truck up there.
The whole exercise is a waste of time.
Because it's going to rain for 2 days now, I understand.
We're not seeing sunup or sundown
for the next couple of days.
Unload it!
MARK: Well, if he's that confident,
maybe I should just go underneath it.
[laughs]
PAULIE: Tuffy believes this is gonna work.
But he also has never done it before.
So here I am thinking, okay,
it's time for me to back up, I'm gonna back up.
Platform's gonna fly everyone over me,
my truck's gonna go down into a hole, and it's all for what?
JOHN: Got to get dead center, Tuffy.
Think fast!
PAULIE: You can move the platform.
JOHN: Oh, he's right on.
TUFFY: Little more.
You're on there.
MARK: Well, Tuff, any last words?
TUFFY: No, unload the damn truck.
PAULIE: Here's the moment of truth.
I'm either gonna put my truck up there and all's gonna be good,
or I'm gonna tip it over and all we're gonna be left with
is an excavator and a pile of wood.
Tell me when to stop.
TUFFY: You're good, whoa, whoa!
MARK: Look at that, it didn't even rock.
JOHN: Wow, I love that.
MARK: Oh, my goodness!
[cheering]
I'm sorry. You were right, I was wrong.
It didn't even budge.
TUFFY: I told you it's all a waste of time.
PAULIE: So I roll onto the thing
and I'm waiting for the crash, nothing.
I just roll on like I'm backing up into my driveway.
TUFFY: I generally don't build things that fail.
It didn't even wiggle an eighth of an inch.
PAULIE: Tuffy was right,
I mean, this thing can handle a lot of weight.
So when we get weight on all of our corners, all of our walls,
it's gonna be good.
TUFFY: Gee ***, who would have thought of all that?
PAULIE: Alright, let's give it a spin.
Our next test is, can it spin?
I want to see it with a pinkie.
TUFFY: One thumb.
PAULIE: I want to see it with a pinkie.
TUFFY: One thumb.
JOHN: Now that Paulie put the GMC up there,
I'm very comfortable with it.
This is beautiful, really beautiful.
PAULIE: You like that? JOHN: Yes.
PAULIE: You ready to put a cabin on top?
JOHN: Yes, I am.
TUFFY: We've got a long ways to go.
Now we've got to build a cabin and get the roof on,
and we've got bad weather coming,
so we really got to kick it in gear now.
I'm not sure we're gonna get all this work done on time.
PAULIE: This is great. We're all here.
It's raining, we're gonna get a lot of rain today.
Let's push through in true Vermont form.
Glad you got your Hawaiian shirt on, ready to go there.
Where we want to be at the end of the day is have a cabin,
alright, no roof, but we want to have four walls,
all of our doors and windows set, alright?
So be safe.
Remember, everything's gonna be very slippery.
PAULIE: We're gonna put them right up on the deck.
JOHN: Okay, let's do it!
PAULIE: Everything is labeled on the side.
TUFFY: What size driver drives the screw?
PAULIE: One of the things we went for here
was our log cabin to make things a little easier for us,
you know, it pretty much comes in a kit
from Southland Log Homes.
Everything's numbered and labeled
and all the hard work is really done for you.
We have to assemble, we have to put it all together.
And by the end of today
I'd like to have those four walls of this log cabin,
20 feet by 20 feet up.
MARK: This has a number but I can't read it.
Can you read that number?
PAULIE: This one sits over, the next one's gonna sit over.
The next one's gonna sit over,
the next one this way's gonna sit over.
So it's like this.
MARK: The Lincoln Log effect.
PAULIE: Right?
One of the great things for us, because we're keeping it simple
as the exterior wall's done, the interior wall's done,
because it's all logs that you're stacking,
one on top of another.
Butt and pass.
This is butting into this. This is passing.
So, boom, boom, boom, boom. All the way up.
We follow our map and it all makes sense.
Everything is labeled, okay?
Everything is labeled.
Grab a 9-inch lock there.
Drive one more right in here.
I don't like your hand there.
JOHN: I don't like my hand there. He's dangerous.
PAULIE: The weather really slowed us down this week,
and what should have been a relatively easy build...
I mean, our business model
is that we build cabins in a week's time.
You know, rain or shine.
This week, all rain.
JOHN: Paulie, I have to tell you,
I'm standing here and I can't believe it's really happening,
and I'm like, I feel all of a sudden I'm gonna wake up
and feel I was just having a dream
and it's not really happening, it's not reality.
PAULIE: It's happening, John.
JOHN: You want to slap me to make sure?
PAULIE: No, no.
JOHN: After all these years,
I finally have my cabin in the woods.
Almost. I almost have my cabin in the woods.
TUFFY: I'm a whacker now.
PAULIE: Every cabin we do,
we want to kind of pull out the stops
and do some special things for our clients.
So I'm gonna surprise these guys
by giving them a pizzeria in the woods.
I've got Tuffy working on an outdoor pizza oven.
It's gonna be perfect.
TUFFY: He wants to access the pizza oven from the deck.
But the ground is like 6.5 feet down.
So we cut the ends off from a 500-gallon propane tank.
We're gonna fill it full of dirt to mass it up.
We're gonna have to build a square base
on top of the round tank.
Lay the first course of brick
and then you can start putting your bricks in
and build your pizza oven.
JOHN: Hey, Paulie, I've got something over here
I want to show you.
PAULIE: Alright.
JOHN: Oh, yeah, over here. Here it is.
PAULIE: I got to the job site this morning.
The guys had something they wanted to show me.
JOHN: What do you think of this here?
PAULIE: The spool?
JOHN: Yeah.
We thought maybe someday it'd come I handy for something.
We don't know what, but...
So we found an empty spool.
I like the idea of having incorporate that
in the cabin design.
PAULIE: This is nice. Cut this down, a table maybe?
MARK: Knights of the roundtable?
PAULIE: Yeah, you want a nice, big, round table
out on that deck?
JOHN: Yeah, that'd be nice. MARK: That's heavy, though.
PAULIE: The cabin's sitting on. JOHN: Will that deck hold that?
PAULIE: You want a heavy table.
Think of the lumber we'd have to use
to build something like this.
This is gonna save us 300, 500 bucks.
JOHN: I always liked big round tables.
We have a round deck
and so I think it's gonna really look nice out there.
PAULIE: That's good.
MARK: Wait, the table should spin just like the thing
and we could just...
PAULIE: Maybe! JOHN: A lazy Susan!
MARK: A lazy Susan table!
PAULIE: Now you're thinking! That's what I'm talking about.
You're sitting here, you want that slice of pizza
that's over there, you just go whoom!
There you go, see?
That's a good idea, you guys.
I'm not in this business because things are easy.
This is not why we do this.
We do this because we're able to do the things that aren't easy
and give clients things that they never expected.
JOHN: So, Paulie, are you gonna build this table?
PAULIE: No, Tuffy's gonna build that table. Let's go.
MARK: Are you gonna tell him?
PAULIE: I'll tell him.
JOHN: Okay.
PAULIE: Yo!
TUFFY: Sounds like I'm getting bombarded
with special projects again here.
Are you out of your mind?
PAULIE: Sorry, I'll be back.
TUFFY: That's all me, too.
I mean, Paulie sticks with the building.
These projects are all me.
I don't have enough hours in the day for all this.
Un-[bleep]-believable.
PAULIE: This rain has really killed our schedule.
We still got to get our roof done.
We got to get all this decking done.
We haven't even started the pizza oven and the table yet.
We only have two days left.
We got a lot to do.
TUFFY: Paulie just can't be happy with the regular table.
He wants it to spin.
So that's a little bit of an undertaking
making a 700-pound wire roll spin.
You got a spinning house, you got to have a spinning table.
PAULIE: Whenever I come up to something mechanical like that,
I kind of put it in his hands because he will make it work.
Not without a complaint, but he will make it work.
TUFFY: That turned into a big [bleep] project.
MAN: 81.
MARK: Are those long enough? JOHN: Yeah, they are.
MARK: Today me and John were given power tools,
hand tools, screws, saws.
Things that we should never have.
Is this the kind of saw that if you get your finger close to it
that it'll stop automatically, a safety feature?
MARK: Alright, John, you cut.
They had us work on a door, the door for John's cabin.
Alright, that's squared.
You know, they should have had you doing this
from the beginning.
You actually look like you can do this.
JOHN: I can't tell you how exhausted I am.
I usually don't do manual labor,
but in this case, how could I say no to them?
They're helping me build my cabin, but it has been tough.
Every bone in my body hurts.
MARK: Got it, John?
My wife asked me, "Why you doing all of this?"
Because he's my cousin and we have fun together
and, you know, it's family.
It's like just trying to help him out.
I know there's more further adventures waiting for us
once we're settled here.
Looks good to me.
JOHN: Beautiful, absolutely beautiful.
PAULIE: Tuffy!
The time has come.
These guys have worked very hard.
We got 24 hours left, let's send them away.
TUFFY: I was wondering when you were gonna send 'em off.
PAULIE: Because we got to load this kitchen.
We need shopping.
We need cheeses, we need tomatoes, we need sauce.
We need...
TUFFY: Gray squirrel, couple of gray squirrels.
PAULIE: Couple of gray squirrels.
So, listen, you've been working very hard, we got surprises,
we need you to get out of here.
We need you to go away for 24 hours.
TUFFY: There's some special things we'd like to do.
You can't be involved in them.
PAULIE: We'll call you tomorrow when we need you to come back.
TUFFY: Go trade that Hawaiian shirt in
for some decent work clothes while you're at it.
PAULIE: Have fun.
So we got some real bad weather coming in right now.
We want to get doors, windows in, and roof on
before this thing hits.
We still have an eastern deck that needs to be built.
So there's a lot to be done in the next 24 hours.
TUFFY: It's not raining in...
It's only raining in half of the building.
PAULIE: Well, because we don't have a roof on this half.
Alright, so...
TUFFY: We got a couple problems we got to work on here today.
PAULIE: A big problem, I got a big problem,
and the weather's just making me think of it.
It's when, let's say you come up here for the weekend,
you got the bad weather going and you got to turn the cabin.
How you gonna do that in the middle of the night?
TUFFY: The excavator had a hydraulic mechanism
that we stripped out.
There's a gear reduction box down there on that excavator.
Paulie wants the ability of being able to spin the house
from inside the house, because he can't envision being outside,
10 below zero, having his wife out there,
"Hey, honey, push a little harder,"
pushing on the side of the camp.
Here's that beautiful gearbox right here.
The little gear here feeding a big gear down there.
So it's bearing gear reduction.
It's like 60 to 1.
So a little bit of a turn here is powerful.
PAULIE: One of the things you can't forget
is when you're in the cabin,
what's below you is an excavator,
with this big ball bearing.
And you're turning this little wheel,
and it's turning the gear that's turning a bigger gear,
that's turning a bigger gear, that's turning a cabin.
TUFFY: We'll drill a hole through the floor,
then we can take an extension, a socket extension,
and then I don't know, put a pipe wrench on it, I don't know.
PAULIE: Do you have a tape measure on you?
TUFFY: We're gonna use the gearbox
that spun the original excavator.
I mean, there's already been millions of dollars spent
in engineering how to spin an excavator around.
So why bother reinventing the wheel?
We're just gonna use the gearbox that's already there.
What's the chances on drilling through somebody's foot?
PAULIE: That's what I'm wondering.
[laughs]
TUFFY: I'll just drill slow.
MARK: So you need stuff like olive oil, basil, garlic.
JOHN: I think this is great. I'll tell you, I'm exhausted.
I'm glad they want to get rid of me for a while.
I'll go shopping. I don't care.
It's a lot easier than trudging through the mud
and climbing the ladders.
MARK: Hey, Gordon.
Did you ever hear of gabagool?
Yeah, I knew we were gonna get that reaction.
JOHN: You don't have that.
MARK: You don't have that either?
JOHN: Do you have anything similar to that?
MARK: Ah, we're home-- the Italian aisle.
Get some olive oil, definitely got to get olive oil.
JOHN: I would like this one.
MARK: Alright, get that one.
JOHN: We're picking up antipasto,
different hams, cheeses.
No gray squirrel.
They had rabbit, but it was frozen.
And we don't think Tuffy's gonna like frozen rabbit.
Oh, my God, I'm gonna blow away out there!
Wow!
Okay, here we go!
Woo!
MARK: Open that door!
Ahh!
PAULIE: We're obviously not in good shape.
We have high winds coming.
We're starting to lose things.
We got to tear down tents!
We're gonna lose all our tents!
Tuffy, they're not made for 50-mile-an-hour winds!
TUFFY: The winds are picking up.
They said there's like tornado winds coming in.
There's hurricane warnings.
We got to get these tents down and get these tools picked up,
no dodging it.
I got to get my raincoat on and help.
Got to get tarps over the tools!
We got to get these tents broke down.
We got about 2 minutes!
TUFFY: Thankfully, the storm has passed.
We're back at the job site, it looks like a disaster here.
Our tents are blown over, our tools are all wet.
It's a muddy mess,
but thank God there's no damage to our building.
So we need to get back to work
and just deal with what we've got.
PAULIE: We sent away John and Mark
and we won't be seeing them until tomorrow.
So whatever happens has to happen in the next 24 hours,
and we have a long ways to go.
Yo! Tuffy, how's it going in there?
TUFFY: Good.
PAULIE: Oh, it's looking good in there.
I mean, you're not ready to cook yet, but it's looking good.
What do you do? You go up with the whole red brick thing?
TUFFY: Well, twice.
You got to go with the fire brick
and then you go with the red brick.
TUFFY: You need a fire brick floor,
'cause you build a wood fire actually inside the oven.
So it's a wood-fired pizza oven.
You build an archway out of fire brick.
You let that cure, and they're ugly,
so now you need red bricks to go over the top of the fire brick.
So it's not just, oh, can you build me a pizza oven?
Yeah, okay.
PAULIE: You need anything?
TUFFY: Yeah, I could use a couple of red bricks.
PAULIE: Here they come.
You need some mortar?
Grab your brick, here comes some mortar.
TUFFY: Really?
PAULIE: Do you want another brick?
Oh, there goes your mortar!
The rain's really put us behind schedule.
We got all of our details to do, and we want to do that before
John and Mark are on their way back.
TUFFY: This log cabin was supposed to be an easy week
'cause they go together pretty good,
and you don't really need a lot of labor,
but it just rained for 4 days.
It just turned the whole site into a mud hole.
We had the wind, we had the rain, we had it all.
PAULIE: The excavator under the house,
this came off the same thing.
MAN: Fantastic.
PAULIE: Nice.
We didn't do real well as far as the money goes.
We had to put a lot of guys on it.
There was a lot of work and we added a lot of things.
But I think, in the end, this will come back tenfold.
The big question here is once we get this cabin done,
will it spin?
JOHN: We had so much rain and mud
and they were really running behind when we left.
They were saying that they're gonna have the cabin spin.
I don't know how they're gonna start it.
I don't know how they're gonna stop it.
But I can't wait to get back
and take the spinning cabin for a ride.
MARK: John, to him, it still isn't real yet.
He keeps thinking it's like a dream.
And I think when he finally takes a look
at the finished product, he's gonna be like, wow,
I don't even have to get pinched. It's real.
TUFFY: Fire in the hole.
[applause]
JOHN: Oh, my God! Look at this! Wow!
MARK: I can't believe they finished it!
JOHN: I see a cabin, it's all completed,
had a roof on it and everything, two decks, all furnished.
I can't believe that they did everything
that they did so quickly.
Am I in the right place?
PAULIE: Yeah, you're in the right place.
You planning on moving in with your shirts?
JOHN: We figured you guys got to be part of the crowd now, so...
TUFFY: That's my favorite shirt. MARK: Your favorite shirt?
PAULIE: How about that? MARK: Come on, just put it on.
TUFFY: I've picked on him all week about his shirt,
and what's he do today, he gives me one of his shirts as a gift.
[laughs]
Maybe if I was ever to take a vacation,
I might wear it or something.
But it's not an everyday shirt.
It's too eye-catchy.
JOHN: I want to thank everybody from the bottom of my heart
for all the hard work you did in the rain and everything else.
Thank you so much for all your help.
Thank you for making my dreams come true.
[applause]
Now, as soon as I learn how to cook,
I'm gonna cook everybody a nice meal.
PAULIE: Very nice. There you go.
JOHN: I wanted a cabin in the middle of the woods
my whole life, and today is the first day
that my dream finally, finally came true.
I'm just ecstatic.
PAULIE: Here's your western deck.
And you see the sun's gonna be going down right there.
But we want to take you guys on a little bit of a ride.
So step up on the cabin deck.
We're gonna have Charlie and Tanner
give us a little bit of a push.
Gentlemen.
JOHN: Wow!
[applause]
This is amazing! Wow.
MARK: I don't even feel anything.
And it's so quiet.
JOHN: I know, it's really nice.
MARK: It's like a Disney ride.
JOHN: Boy, that's smooth.
MARK: It's smooth.
PAULIE: And here's our eastern deck.
MARK: Hello, sunrise.
JOHN: Oh, my God.
MARK: This is nice. I like the table and chairs.
JOHN: Putting such a heavy cabin on a bearing, you know,
I didn't think it could even take that weight,
and you would just figure that it would be a rough ride,
but it wasn't.
It was really, really, really smooth.
You couldn't even feel it spinning.
That's how smooth it was.
JOHN: This is beautiful. PAULIE: You like that?
JOHN: Absolutely beautiful.
MARK: If I didn't have my eyes open,
I wouldn't even know we were moving.
PAULIE: We started this week, talk about a clean canvas.
We pounded in some gravel to give us ourselves a level pad
and we put an excavator there.
On that excavator, we started putting steel on.
On top of that we put our decking.
After that, 16,000 pounds of logs came in,
and in the end you have a spinning cabin
that faces both east and west and everything in between.
So how about the inside of the cabin?
Want to take a look at the inside of the cabin?
JOHN: I'm dying. I thought you were never gonna ask.
PAULIE: Right through that door right there.
JOHN: Wow! Oh, my God! Look at this!
Wow!
Look at, there's the piece from the excavator.
PAULIE: Nice eyes, John!
JOHN: Look at this.
I can't believe this.
Absolutely beautiful.
Look at this.
MARK: Look at the lights up there.
PAULIE: One of the grates.
MARK: The excavator.
PAULIE: That's right.
TUFFY: Part of the fenders.
JOHN: Look at the way they have this.
I feel like I'm at a store. I'm in shock.
When I walked in, I didn't know what to expect,
but I never expected that.
When I was looking at one thing,
they had something else, something else, something else.
I couldn't believe they had all that work done.
I'm still taking everything in.
MARK: Well, there's a loft up there.
When I saw Johnny open the door,
you could just see it on his face
that the dream was now not a dream.
It was a real happening reality.
We're just sitting there with our jaws open
and we couldn't say anything, we were both speechless.
PAULIE: What do you think of that?
JOHN: What the hell is that?
PAULIE: You know, we were thinking about,
you know, in the middle of the snow
and how you're gonna turn the cabin.
So my partner here came up with a wonderful way to do it.
JOHN: How do I do it?
Turn this?
TUFFY: Just throw him on the couch.
Grab a hold of that wheel and give it a turn.
JOHN: Look at this.
Wow!
PAULIE: How about that? JOHN: Wow.
MARK: I feel like I'm taking a train ride
looking out the window.
PAULIE: There's your eastern deck right there
with the sunrise.
JOHN: This is incredible.
PAULIE: What do you think, John?
JOHN: I'm in shock. I'm in awe. I don't even know.
Thank you so much. I don't even know what to say.
I'm at a loss for words.
MARK: They put this giant wheel in the center of the cabin,
almost like those rides at Disney World
where you spin the teapot,
except this spins the entire cabin.
The house starts spinning,
and you're watching the view go around,
and the house is so smooth.
And you're just like awestruck.
You're like, wow!
PAULIE: You like that? MARK: I like that.
PAULIE: Look, this is where you're gonna learn to cook.
Some local Vermont marble there.
You got a stainless steel countertop here.
So you see you got all the tools.
MARK: Well, how do we get the food from in here...
PAULIE: Now, listen.
How do you get the food from there to there?
Tuffy, let's show him. Ready?
JOHN: This is great.
Now I can serve everybody right here with the pizzas.
I feel like I'm at an actual pizza parlor right now.
PAULIE: So what do you say? Let's make up a pizza.
JOHN: Let's make some pizzas.
You open the window, it becomes a pass through
from the serving area to the deck.
I never even seen anything like that.
I mean, the whole design and a lot of thought was put into this
and it came out really fantastic.
PAULIE: Cook it in the oven. Go ahead out with Tuffy.
TUFFY: Your very own wood-fired pizza oven.
JOHN: Wow, pizza oven. Look at this!
PAULIE: How about that?
Burns at about 900 degrees.
You want to get that really going.
TUFFY: Already got it preheated.
Feel the heat come out of there.
PAULIE: You just slide that right on there.
TUFFY: You can fit a couple of pizzas in there.
PAULIE: Oh, yeah, you can cook everything you need in there.
JOHN: When I first seen it,
I didn't know it was a pizza oven.
I said, "What's that? To warm my boots up?"
I didn't know what it was.
But Tuffy showed me it was a pizza oven.
I never expected half of the things they did,
let alone a pizza oven.
But I think that was fantastic and I can't wait to use it.
TUFFY: Would you guys like some pizza?
MARK: I'd like some pizza.
TUFFY: How about this?
MARK: A lazy Susan! Look at this!
This is amazing!
PAULIE: That's not all for you, Mark.
TUFFY: Some for us.
MARK: This has been a very exhausting, exhilarating,
tiring, and exciting week all rolled into one.
Looking here, looking at the cabin all finally completed,
it was worth it 1,000 times over.
PAULIE: Someone bring out little Paulie!
BETTY: He really is little!
PAULIE: Put him right there.
There you go.
BETTY: Okay!
TUFFY: I've always known it would work.
But it's just such a wacky idea to try to sell to somebody else
that it's hard to find a client that's kooky enough
to want to even do something like this,
and these guys, they fit the program all the way.
So we couldn't have worked for a better group of people really.
JOHN: Toast to the new cabin and my new friends!
MARK: They always say what comes around, goes around.
Well, this house goes around all the time.
So I want everyone to come around all the time!
Hear, hear!
PAULIE: Hear, hear. Very nice, Mark.
Very nice.